Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your cancer went into remission, so everybody's cancer must also be curable?
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Straw man. Nobody is suggesting euthanasia as the first line of treatment.
Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
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Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#102related discussion from thefp.com reporting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39915254
Related material:
Dutch Euthanasia Report 2021 (English PDF): https://wfrtds.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/RTE_JV2021_ENG...
Number cases (1998-2022): https://www.statista.com/statistics/1363041/netherlands-euth...
Odd internal variations by district and other factors: https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/news/a-critical-look-at-...
I haven't found a before|after comparison of suicide in the area, the report distinguishes between "Termination of life on request" (the bulk of cases) and "assisted suicide" - the criteria for differentiation of these likely has to do with terminal illness and quality of life.
In 2021 it was 7,459 Termination on request Vs 189 assisted suicide.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#103It's disheartening so many don't see the brain as a physical part of ourselves, just the mental. To describe this individual as suffering from "crippling depression" but also "physically healthy" when they clearly suffer from long term mental health problems feels like an oxymoron. I'm not sure for what reason people think everyone needs to be alive and live long natural lives. If she doesn't end her life humanely an…
> If she doesn't end her life humanely and in the comfort of trained professionals, she can just simply do it at home in a far more unpleasant way
What's the difference? It's unavoidable that long term if assisted suicide is normalized (and even endorsed by the healthcare system) more people who wouldn't have chosen that option on their own will decide to kill themselves (or ask a doctor to do it).
How do you think a person suffering from a mental illness would be affected by their psychiatrist telling them that he can't help him anymore and that maybe they should consider killing themselves? A terminal cancer patient has no hope and is doomed to die regardless of anything else. That's not the case if you suffering from a severe mental health issue: - there are many other treatment options that they didn't try (because they couldn't afford to, are not available in their home country, they aren't aware of them etc. etc.) - a definitive diagnosis is impossible, psychiatrists are not oncologists and due to the nature of the field only have a very vague understanding of what they are even doing.
I'm certainly not judging the person who chose this path (even if they weren't indirectly forced into it by other people and had no other options, even if I find it hard to believe that could be the case very often) but from the perspective of the state/society/healthcare system this creates some very perverse incentives. The cost difference between investing large amounts of money into new advances/expensive (possibly not even financially but politically) treatments and using euthanasia as a way to solve the same problem (just way more effectively) is pretty big.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
So we should go about enabling the "better" committing of wrong acts? A killer set on killing will kill anyway, so maybe we could pair them up and have both happy? The "they will do it anyway" argument is as absurd as it is dangerous. Heh, it's not like it backfired in the past at all, is it?
Why do you think it's "wrong" that someone wants to die? Isn't it her life to begin with? It's hers to decide what she wants to do with it, and if she wants to die because of unbearable suffering (which is the legal threshold in the Netherlands, and needs to be confirmed by two independent doctors) she should be free to do so.
Also, I'd like to constructively challenge the idea of "enabling" something that someone is free to do. You're free to kill yourself, yes, nothing anyone can do about it. But is it good to help enabling it?
If yes, then we should have places where one can go and absolutely get destroyed by meth or fentanyl or whatever's your choice.
I'm afraid the only difference between both cases is the economic burden they cause or not. The one with drugs increases it, while euthanasia decreases it. That makes me suspicious.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very happy you're happy :-) Unfortunately this is not the case for a very small minority of individuals who suffer without a cure. I prefer these people to go through their process with dignity, than to go for the other option.
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Even if there were a cure in the future, there isn't one now. That's not the medical system giving up, that's being realistic. Having to wait while unbearably suffering is not something that can be expected of someone.
I prefer a system where there is a good procedure for death with dignity than one where we are not allowed to help someone end their prolonged and unbearable suffering.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> What if it's just a phase they'll grow out of? Nonsense - you clearly never had somebody close to you suffer from it. My daughter suffers from depression - it is not a state of mind or a funk you can snap out of.
You have misunderstood. That sentence is not a reflection of my opinion - my whole second paragraph was a mock example of how mental illness skeptics think about depression.
Sorry about that.
It really get's me in the crop when my family unfamiliar with mental illness says the same things.
The folks who think you only see a mental health professional or go to the clinic because you are mad.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you think it's "wrong" that someone wants to die? Isn't it her life to begin with? It's hers to decide what she wants to do with it, and if she wants to die because of unbearable suffering (which is the legal threshold in the Netherlands, and needs to be confirmed by two independent doctors) she should be free to do so.
Also, I'd like to constructively challenge the idea of "enabling" something that someone is free to do. You're free to kill yourself, yes, nothing anyone can do about it. But is it good to help enabling it? If yes, then we should have places where one can go and absolutely get destroyed by meth or fentanyl or whatever's your choice. I'm afraid the only difference between both cases is the economic burden they cause o…
You mean Medically Supervised Injecting Centres ?
https://www.uniting.org/community-impact/uniting-medically-s...
These exist in a number of countries and are seen to have favourable outcomes:
https://adf.org.au/insights/medically-supervised-injecting-c...
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fundamentally this is not different at all from suicide. Every physically healthy and conscious person is capable of committing it if they were strongly want to. So why would we as a society want to make it more acceptable and encourage people to see it as a perfectly viable option? Also where do we a draw a line? If we're talking about terminally ill patients it's usually fairly clear. Surely there are many mentally…
Given the number of failed suicide attempts, not everyone is capable of committing it successfully. And they're often forced to use brutal methods that some unfortunate soul then has to discover or clean up (e.g. firearms, jumping, or standing in front of a train) Giving the long-term-suffering an option of a peaceful and painless way out seems much more compassionate. It just needs the right level of safeguards to s…
> Given the number of failed suicide attempts, not everyone is capable of committing it successfully.
Which is actually a good thing if these statistics are correct: "Approximately 7% (range: 5-11%) of attempters eventually died by suicide, approximately 23% reattempted non-fatally, and 70% had no further attempts."*
*https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survi...
> Giving the long-term-suffering an option of a peaceful and painless way out seems much more compassionate
Also much cheaper for the state/society/healthcare system (and even their families) than investing into providing additional treatment options
> e.g. late-stage cancer. But separate rules could be used for those who clearly have terminal illnesses
IMHO that's an entirely different issue, if all the available options were exhausted and the patient is basically guaranteed to die in N weeks/months while simultaneously suffering more and more giving that person the option to end it sooner seems to both reasonable and compassionate.
How can such certainty exist when were talking about mental illness? The decision made by this person will surely depend on external factors, e.g. if you're poor, your psychiatrist tells you that they can't help you, you don't have any close family to fallback on etc. are you more or less likely to commit suicide than someone who is suffering from a similarly severe issue but has all of those things?
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree. It also begs the question, are the people in these situations even mentally fit enough to make the decision rationally? With the limited context I have, I don’t think so. There’d also a lot of reliance on the doctor’s “its never going to get better” - yet time and time again with physical ailments we hear of the impossibility of recovery yet many do recover.
> It also begs the question, are the people in these situations even mentally fit enough to make the decision rationally? With the limited context I have, I don’t think so. Without euthanasia. A person in that situation can and will choose other means to kill himself/herself.
Any citations for this? That’s an assumption.
Re: Physically healthy 28-year-old woman schedules euthanasia due to depression
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fundamentally this is not different at all from suicide. Every physically healthy and conscious person is capable of committing it if they were strongly want to. So why would we as a society want to make it more acceptable and encourage people to see it as a perfectly viable option? Also where do we a draw a line? If we're talking about terminally ill patients it's usually fairly clear. Surely there are many mentally…
The Netherlands have drawn their line, have a look at their laws [1]. This includes a procedure where multiple medical doctors have to agree to grant someone a death with dignity. I prefer this over unbearable suffering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_the_Netherlands
All of those conditions seem pretty vague and subjective if we're talking about mental illness.
Statistically the likelihood of a person of chosing or not choosing to go through this will strongly depend on external factors: their financial conditions, family, support network access to healthcare and different treatment options (.e.g when you psychiatrist tells you "There’s nothing more we can do for you" that (optimistically) means there is nothing left that you could afford to or the state/insurance company is willing to pay for, not that there is nothing else that could be tried).
That's a separate argument but long-term this will likely also create false incentives. Euthanasia is certainly cheaper than spending large amounts of money on new treatments and also providing welfare and social services to those people (because on the whole they are guaranteed to be a net drain on the society economically).